Chips won the Cold War; rare earths may win the next
The US is doing too little to close the energy-transition technological gap.
A mine for heavy rare earth metals, the minerals crucial for everything from electric cars to drones, robots and missiles, on the outskirts of Longnan, China.
In retrospect, the symbolism of the moment was foreboding.
On May 15, 2019, President Donald Trump signed an executive order
banning US firms from doing business with Chinese telecommunications companies, including Huawei Technologies. Five days after that first broadside in a brewing trade-and-technology war, Chinese President Xi Jinping was photographed touring a factory producing rare earth magnets. Such devices, his visit seemed to imply, could be a geopolitical weapon for China quite as potent as advanced semiconductors are for the US.
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Independent Singapore
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